


to feel anything at all

by queendromeda



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, F/F, Ghost Lee Thompkins, Grief/Mourning, Post-Season/Series 04, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-13 20:12:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16899129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queendromeda/pseuds/queendromeda
Summary: Barbara Kean is a survivor who sometimes wishes she wasn't.Lee Thompkins is just dead.





	to feel anything at all

**Author's Note:**

> This is an unmitigated disaster. 
> 
> Take everything that happens with a grain of salt because Barbara is the ultimate unreliable narrator. If motives don't make sense, that's even better.

It ends like this:

Tabitha, beautiful and loyal and _hers_ , bleeding out of — well, everywhere. It's something distinctly Brian de Palma-esque. Think Carrie 1976. Think tragedy. Think horror. Think _oh God, oh no, no, no, no, nononononono_ —

Then don't think anything at all.

Don't think about how normal the morning was. Don't think about the semi-sly look she gave right before she took her first, and last, sip of coffee — they were drinking out of porcelain teacups. Kean family heirlooms that Barbara liked to scoff at and cherish in equal measure and Tabitha's cup had a chip in the powder blue saucer that paired with it. Only it wasn't powder blue anymore, was it?

Barbara's cup was powder blue too. It still was. It remained. She doctored her coffee liberally with Bailey's. Too much, probably. She still remembered her treatment home after so many years and she still remembered her cravings and she still remembered the withdrawal. But, she was a being of vices and a queen among men, so why shouldn't she indulge? Only, Tabitha would always _look_ at her when she drank too much — as if it was something that needed to be kept in check. As if Tabitha was any healthier than she was. She'd look at her with hardly more than a quirk of her brows, lowering her eyes, her mouth curling in derision, and Barbara would bristle but cut back.

They were drinking expensive coffee out of powder blue, porcelain teacups and then, just like that, there was blood. Everywhere. Rivers of it. An ocean of it. Enough for a lifetime.

Enough, certainly, for a life.

Barbara thinks about it in fragments. She thinks about it like she thinks about every other horror that she's faced — listing them off under her breath before she falls asleep. _Look at me,_ she wants to scream, _I'm alive. I'm in control. And you're dead and gone. Look at me._

Mom. Dad. Butch. Jason. Theo. Ra's — Tabitha.

Something curdles in her at the thought.

Offhandedly, while kneeling beside the body, the blood no longer warm on her skin, she wishes she wore the slate gray suit that Tabitha was fond off. Her blood would have been easily seen against the light silk. She was wearing all black today. An oversight on her part.

It was unfair, wasn't it? That Tabitha, ever the shadow of whoever she loved, was a rusty sort of vibrant in death, while Barbara, loud and obnoxious and always absurdly bright, was left to be the dark figure lurking behind, drenched in blood.

Life was funny that way.

She laughed.

She didn't stop.

 

 

 

Her name was Ruth. She was pretty. Short red hair, big green eyes. An innocent air about her. Not the type of person anyone would immediately accuse of poisoning someone like Tabitha Galavan.

Then again, who would ever even try to poison someone like Tabitha Galavan?

The answer, Barbara found out after Ruth was down to three fingers on her left hand and four on her right, was Oswald Cobblepot. The fun of killing Butch in front of her must have worn off. Ozzie had always been an annoying thorn in her side, but to go so far as to send one of his people to seek protection in the Sirens and then hide behind her skirts while she killed Tabitha in the most cowardly way possible?

Pathetic.

Barbara decided that she needed new gloves. Preferably made out of Penguin skin. Only the best and rarest of materials were good enough for her.

Ruth was not as pretty in death. Her skin was as red as her hair but far streakier. Her eyes were just gone.  It was messy business, but, looking down at the dull glint of ribs peaking out of her chest cavity, it was worth it. Maybe she'd make a necklace out of them.

Tabitha would be proud. She'd always had a soft spot for reusing broken things.

Lelia, her hand still holding down onto Ruth's throat, interrupted her musings. "What shall I do with the body?"

She was pretty too, in the same way Tabitha was. Proud features. Strong shoulders. Deadly and delicious, just Barbara's type. She wondered how Lelia would taste. She wondered if she'd like the sting of nails down her back. She wondered if Tabitha loved Butch more than she loved her.

"String her up," she said, dismissively. She rubbed her hands down her pant legs, the blood on her palms soaking into the silk. She wore the slate grey suit today. Only three days late.

"Is that the best idea?"

Barbara paused. Something sluggish was working its way through her veins. The same anger she'd felt when strung up in Jason's house. The same hopelessness she'd felt when Falcone collected her — when _Butch_ collected her — and it always came back to _him_ , didn't it? What he did. What he didn't do. What he could have done. What he threatened to do. Her hands itched to hold something heavy. She wanted to break open a skull. Any skull. She wasn't picky.

Carefully, her shoulders straight back and her chin raised, just like her mother taught her, ruler to her knuckles if she ever did anything wrong, she blinked down at Lelia. "Excuse me?"

Lelia didn't move. She was like a dog scenting the air for danger. She probably had a lot of experience dealing with Ra's and his moods. Barbara, however, was a different beast entirely. "The women who come here come for sanctuary. Won't it send the wrong message if we're stringing up women alongside the men?"

Tabitha killed her. If it hadn't been for Ra's she'd be dead. If it hadn't been for Ra's she'd have never known this pain in the first place.

Tabitha killed her. Ra's brought her back. Barbara killed Ra's. Oswald killed Tabitha.

Tabitha killed her.

That's what she keeps going back to.

"You don't want them to be scared?" She hummed. What was a world without fear? What was Gotham without fear? "If anyone comes here looking for rainbows and gumdrops they've come to the wrong place. Let them be afraid. Let them worry. String up her body. Now."

 

 

 

Three days after Tabitha's death she sees Lee Thompkins.

Or she thinks she does—

Codeine always made things a little hazy around the edges for her.

Barbara was lounging against her silk sheets, toes curling in delight, thoughts comfortably numbed. She was playing with Tabitha's hair. It had always been one of her favorite things about Tabby. She'd always liked the feeling of Barbara's sharp nails dragging across her scalp, almost as much as she liked Barbara's sharp nails dragging down her back. Now, she was a corpse and couldn't enjoy anything, but Barbara still worked her fingers through her hair. It was becoming brittle. She'd have to wash it soon.  

She'd just started to curl herself around Tabitha's body — and she was so cold now, freezing to the touch, the poor thing — when the lights in the room all flickered, wavering back and forth before they cut out entirely, drenching everything in darkness.

Inconvenient, sure, but nothing frightening.

Then, slowly, anticipatory almost, they flickered back on. And on the edge of the bed sat the Good Doctor, Lee Thompkins, herself, looking as sweet as apple pie and as naive as she had been when she stole Jim Gordon from under her nose all those years ago. Barbara hated to admit it, but the bob was a good look on her.

She'd be lying if she said she'd never fantasized about Lee before. When she'd first gone to Arkham she liked to wonder how her pulse would feel under her lips. If she'd whine, like the dainty thing she pretended to be, or if she'd break free and let loose the whore she knew was hiding under the surface. If she'd remain still long enough for Barbara to dig her teeth into her neck and tear out her throat.

Brutal and bloody and beautiful. Those were the three pillars of eroticism that Barbara lived by.

After Arkham, she met Tabitha and any fantasies she had about repressed medical examiners who happened to steal her fiance disappeared.

(for the most part, at least. there was something delicious about post-Tetch virus Lee. something in her was blown wide open, letting the rot she'd buried away come seeping out. a shame she chose to spend her time with Eddie and zombie-Butch.)

Then there was only Tabitha. Then there was no Tabitha. Then she was dead. Then there was Ra's. Then there was Tabitha. And now there was no Tabitha. And, next, she would be dead. Maybe. Hopefully.

Hallucinations were nothing new. They were actually kind of drab if she thought about it. Like wearing a spring collection that's a decade out of style. That she was settling on Lee Thompkins when Tabitha's body was still splayed out next to her on the bed — while her hand was still in Tabitha's hair, while her breath fanned across Tabitha's face — was strange. Something close to guilt began to bubble in her stomach.

Was she really so loathsome as to fantasize about another woman while mourning for Tabby?

(yes, apparently. yes, always. yes, once a monster always a monster.)

Only, Lee was looking less delectable and more despicable. Her pretty mouth was pinched tight and her doe eyes were hateful. The room swayed before Barbara's eyes and she brought her forehead down onto Tabitha's cheek. She liked the contact, the closeness. It made her feel less alone.

"You're pathetic."

It was going to be one of _those_ trips it seemed. Golly.

"No comeback?" Lee asked in faux-concern. "I'm the only one in here Barbara. No need to pretend to have a heart on my behalf."

She curled herself tighter around Tabitha's body. Her chin moving to the juncture between her neck and shoulder, her hand lowering itself to rest over her heart, unbeating. The earthy perfume that Tabitha favored was gone, replaced with the harsh sting of formaldehyde, and Barbara was seized by the unfairness of everything.

"I thought I'd seen you at your lowest before, but you have a habit of upstaging yourself. I never would have imagined you as a necrophiliac, though. Really, Barbara, this is—"

Her patience snapped. "Shut. Up."

Lee laughed without any humor. "Did I strike a nerve, Norman Bates? Feeling defensive?"

She rolled back over onto her side, the room blurring around her as she tried to focus her eyes on the hallucination. "You're even more insufferable when you're in my head."

"Oh, Barbara," Lee said, her voice dripping with condescending pity. "I'm not in your head."

Then, in the blink of an eye, she was gone. The lights left flickering in her wake.

 

 

 

Lelia found her when she was straddling the edge of the building. She watched her approach out of the corner of her eye while taking a long drag of the blunt she'd stolen from some nobody in the main club. Before that moment, Barbara had never appreciated how good her calves looked, but watching one dangle in the open air really improved her perspective.

"Miss Kean," she said, hesitantly. "Is everything alright?"

She smiled. Something caustic settled on the tip of her tongue. "Everything's wonderful, my lovely assassin-ness."

Lelia ignored her. "Some of our ranks have expressed... _concern_ over how you're dealing with the loss of Miss Galavan. There are whispers that you're unfit to be in charge of the League. And discontent will only continue to grow."

"Is that right?" she asked, something white-hot shuddering through her veins. "And do you know who's saying such disloyal things?"

"I have a good idea, yes."

Barbara allowed her smile to grow sharper. "Then I recommend taking care of the problem. Make it... dramatic. Rip out their hearts, for me. Then... settle them around our territory like ugly, rotting gargoyles. Can you do that for me, Lelia?"

The other woman looked frozen, the dim starlight reflecting against her hair like a halo. She had such beautiful hands. Strong. Manicured. Barbara wondered if she'd wear gloves when pulling their hearts away or if she'd let her own skin get bloodied. She wondered if she'd lick her fingers afterward. She wondered if she'd enjoy it at all or if she'd just add to her own list of grievances against Barbara. Loyalty was fickle. That was something she learned the hard way.

"It will be done," she said without inflection, bowing slightly.

"Good," Barbara said, bringing the blunt back up to her lips. "Now scram, sweetheart."

She let herself sigh once Lelia vanished back into the building, watching as her breath came out in little clouds, mixing with the smoke from her blunt. Tabitha hated smoking, but Tabitha was dead. Apropos of nothing, her sighs caught themselves in the back of her throat, turning into sobs that she kept locked behind clenched teeth. Her eyes were wet and her fingers were numb and if she rolled over an inch she'd be freefalling. Like a bird whose wings were clipped off. She'd make a passable sparrow.

"Careful now," a familiar, and unwanted, voice called out. "Jim's not here to play the white knight."

Haltingly, she opened her eyes, red and unamused, to glare out at the figure of Lee Thompkins sitting across from her, hair blowing in the wind. "Lucky for me. Jim doesn't have the best track record when it comes to saving people, does he? Just look at how we turned out, sugar plum."

Lee arched her head back. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Please," Barbara scoffed, "I'm stuck on a rooftop in the Narrows hallucinating my old romantic rival. God, can you imagine how _proud_ my parents would be? And you, Miss Can-Do-No-Wrong, are probably continuing your strange, little ménage à trois with Eddie and Jim. I'm not sure which of us is worse off."

"Me, definitely," Lee said, a bitter gargle that might have been a laugh escaping her.

Barbara shrugged. "Well, I can't say my dream threesome would include a repressed, riddle-obsessed maniac or our mutual ex-fiance, but, hey, to each their own. I'm keeping my girlfriend's dead body in my bed, so I have no ground to stand on."

"Jesus Christ," Lee muttered, with feeling. "I'm _dead_ , Barbara."

"The sex can't be that bad."

Lee closed her eyes. "Listen to me. You're not hallucinating me. I'm haunting you."

Barbara laughed without feeling. "Funny. I thought I was over my fantastical delusions, but I guess trauma has a way of bringing out the crazy in everyone."

Something flickered across Lee's face. Disgust, maybe. It would at least fit. "Barbara I know you've never liked me, and I know you don't like listening to what other people have to say, because _heaven forbid_ you're wrong, but you need to listen to me right now. I'm _dead_. And for some reason, that's _far_ beyond me, I'm stuck lagging behind you day in and day out. I need you to accept this. I'm dead and you're not crazy and life is utter shit, but at least you're alive and not rotting in a dumpster in the Narrows."

Her voice had raised itself into a shout by the end of her rant, but all Barbara could only blink against the onslaught. Her anger was a beautiful, terrible thing. Sweet, almost.

"I liked you more than I should have, probably," Barbara said, letting her arm swing over the edge, dropping the joint somewhere on the pavement below her.

" _Barbara_ —"

"I'm tired, kitten. Try me again in the morning."

" _B_ _arb_ —"

"Goodnight, Leslie."

There was no response.

The finality in her voice must have struck a nerve. With Tabitha, her anger and harshness would have been brushed aside.  With Tabitha, she'd never have to doubt her own stability. With Tabitha, she could just _be_.

Something ached behind her eyes and she couldn't feel her fingers anymore and, in that moment, she wondered if she'd ever really be okay again. 

 

 

 

Barbara was on her second glass of wine — because, as it turned out, she could be moderate when she wanted to be — when Lee Thompkins pushed herself back into her life, her nose wrinkling up in disdain. Admittedly, she was looking worse for wear. All sallow skin and limp hair. Her hateful, lovely doe eyes were fogging over with cataracts, and when she reached a hand up to push her hair away, her fingers were spindly, claw-like. Very haunting.

"What happened to you?" she asked, more out of politeness than any real interest.

"I died."

 _Lucky_ _you_ , Barbara thought but didn't say. It was just after eleven in the morning. Far too early to put a voice to her suicidal idealizations. Those were kept safe and sound for the quiet hours of the night.

Instead, she took another sip of wine and said, "You mentioned that before."

"You ignored me before."

"Ghosts aren't real, sweet pea," Barbara said, waving a lazy hand in her direction. "You know what is? Psychosis. Add in a history of mental illness and a recent traumatic experience and, what do you know? It's like a recipe for hallucinations."

Lee shook her head. "I've read your files, Barbara. None of the psychiatrists you've worked with have ever diagnosed you with psychosis. You've never shown any of the warning signs. No paranoia, no trouble concentrating, no withdrawal from loved ones. You have no history of hallucinations. Why would diagnosing yourself with a mental illness you don't have make any more sense than believing I'm haunting you? It's Gotham. Things like this happen all the goddamn time."

"And people say doctor-patient confidentiality is dead."

"Barbara—"

She clicked her tongue. " _No, I am_. That's all you had to say, Doc. And here I thought dying may have given you a sense of humor."

Lee frowned, her lips pale and peeling, and said, her voice as soft as a whisper, "You really don't believe me."

"What gave it away?"

"You live in Gotham, a city where resurrection is a pastime and serial killers are more abundant than flies, and you don't believe in ghosts. Even when facing one. Even when talking to one. You'd rather believe your crazy. It doesn't make any sense. Why would— _oh_."

Barbara didn't like the dawning look of understanding that graced Lee's sickly face. Her eyes flickered with something cruel. A threat. A promise, hopefully. Her mouth curled itself into a smile, or, really, a shallow, purposeful imitation of one. Everything about Lee screamed mockery. For the first time since the Good Doctor started visiting her, Barbara felt something like unease settle in her stomach.

Everything felt off-kilter.

Lee kept smiling, looking at Barbara with the same patronization reserved for young children, and when she finally spoke her voice was sweeter than honey, and nearly as suffocating. "Poor, pathetic Barbara Kean. You're all alone now, aren't you? Tabitha's nothing but a rotting corpse under silk sheets, and you'll never see her again. Is that what this is? You _miss_ her. You see me, just as dead as poor Tabby and wonder why she's not the one haunting you."

As she spoke, Lee moved closer and closer, her face becoming more and more terrible the closer she came. "But that's the kicker, isn't it Barbara? You know that she'd never haunt you. Why would she want to be around you more than she had to be? No, the only reason you refuse to believe that I am real is because you're too pathetic to accept that Tabitha would leave you all alone in this hell hole. She's _free_."

Barbara was paralyzed. She couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't _think_ of anything that would halt Lee's horrible rampage. Part of her, maybe, didn't want her to stop. Part of her, maybe, wanted her to keep voicing the ugly, awful things that she did because Barbara was too much of a coward to voice them herself.

She felt something warm on her cheeks.

She was crying.

She couldn't remember the last time she cried, tears included. Probably with Jim. After Jim? She wasn't sure. All she really knew was that who she was before Jim Gordon and who she was after were completely different, nearly irreconcilable, people.

She wondered if it was the same for Lee.

She wondered who Jim loved more and she wondered if Tabitha ever really loved her and she wondered if she was always meant to be a means to an end for all the people in her life. Jim. Jason. Tabitha. Ra's. All of their names on repeat over and over again in her head as she stood, frozen, tears streaming down her face, unable to do anything but _wonder_.

It was cruel. It was like snow melting beneath a boot. A transformation. A realization. 

Lee and her just stood, facing each other. They were a body width apart. Too close. There was a stillness in the air, something unstoppered and cold, and she couldn't stop crying. She cried and Lee watched and there was nothing else. That's all there was.

Then—

Lee moved. Not a step at a time. Not humanly. She was a body width apart and then, with a lurch, they were touching. It happened faster than a blink. Suddenly, she was just _there_. She stood as still as a statue, not even breathing, and before Barbara's eyes, all the color in her seemed to seep away, leaving nothing but grey. She was cold and she was grey and there was something hungry in her eyes. Something dangerous.

"Poor Barbara," Lee said softly, almost cooing. "All alone. Always alone." She moved even closer, pressing her cheek against Barbara's, speaking into her ear. "I'll tell you a secret. We're always alone. No matter what we do. No matter who we love. We're born lonely and we die lonely and death? Well, death is the loneliest time of all. There's nothing out there. No one cares. But you already know that, don't you?"

Barbara closed her eyes.

When she opened them Lee was gone, but the cold she brought with her — numbing and oppressive and terrible — seeped into her skin, clinging to whatever it could.

Leslie Thompkins was a ghost.

And Barbara Kean was pathetic.

She was never one for living in denial.

 

 

 

It starts like this:

A circle of salt on marble tiles.

Barbara is startlingly clear-headed, a benefit of forced sobriety, but all that does it make the anger in her veins bubble even hotter. There was something tempering about it. She'd been floating by lately, tethered by grief and hopelessness, but she was beyond that, wasn't she? She'd let herself forget who she was.

She was Barbara fucking Kean and she didn't let things like death ruin her life.

Even Tabitha's.

(especially Tabitha's. she'd hate who Barbara had become. she'd kick and yell and haul her by her hair out of mourning. that's the kind of person she was. that's how much she cared for her. that's _love_ , no matter what some high-and-mighty, rotting corpse said to garner some reaction, because _fuck that_. rain is wet, night is dark, and Tabitha and her loved each other. there was nothing truer than that.)

"Lee, sweetie, want to pop into existence? You said you were always hanging around me. I just want to talk. I promise not to bite. Much."

She's only dully surprised to find that that worked.

There was something to be said for asking nicely for things. Her mother, if she was alive, would have been proud that the lesson she'd drilled into Barbara's head, ruler to knuckles, remained there even after so many years.

Lee was less gruesome this time. Her hair was back in its curled bob and her eyes were clear and alert. Her loafers skirted the edge of the circle. The sweet as honey act had never fooled her, but after the way she'd snapped the last time they'd chatted Barbara was even less endeared.

"Finally embracing the truth?" Lee asked, eyeing the salt on the ground in disdain.

"My eyes are wide open, kitten. Can you say the same?"

Lee frowned at her, as self-righteous as ever. "I've never been the ones with reality problems."

Barbara laughed. "Haven't you? You're not stuck haunting me. You're _scared_. You're decaying, and I don't just mean your pretty face. No, every part of you is rotting because you don't want to move on. You're terrified of it. What was it you said?  _There's nothing out there_ _?_  You're projecting, sugar plum. You said I was scared of death, but why would I be? Been there, done that. You, though? You're running."

"That's ridiculous," Lee said, a frantic, half-afraid laugh falling from her lips. "Out of everyone in Gotham why would I pick you to be around?"

Barbara smiled. "Because you want to make me hurt as much as you hurt. But you already knew that, didn't you?"

"I don't—"

"Want to hurt me? Lee, honey, you've wanted to hurt me since the first time I tried to kill you. Remember that? You bashed my pretty, little head on the ground. I bet you wouldn't have stopped, but then Jim showed up and there's only so much you can justify as self-defense." Barbara circled closer as she spoke. "Am I close?"

Lee glared. "Even if I hated you enough to try to make you miserable, why would I? Why would I want to subject myself to you for so long?"

Her smile grew. "Well, there was always option two. I think the professionals like to call it unfinished business."

"Your ego is as astonishing as ever," Lee said, a humorless laugh escaping her.

"I never said that you were the one that had business with me. Au contraire. I have business with you."

Lee looked ready to scream. "Are you telling me, that I've been stuck haunting you because even in death you've found a way to claw your way into my life, just to fuck it up for me?"

She stepped over the salt, pushing her way into Lee's space, breathing her air. "I'm telling you that it's not your afterlife I want to fuck, but you."

It was dramatic. Think Pride and Prejudice 2005. Think less romance, more lust. Think  _oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yesyesyesyesyesyes—_

Then don't think anything at all.

Just let it happen. 

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on Tumblr @/jeromevalseka.
> 
> Feedback is appreciated!


End file.
